d20 Mongoose Publishing Classic Play - Book of Strongholds & Dynasties.pdf - Mongoose Publishing - R5700

Classic Play

Strongholds & Dynasties

Adrian Bott

Contents

Introduction 2

Strongholds: An Overview 3

Before Construction Begins 18

Basic Buildings in Earth and Wood 30

Intermediate Buildings 43

Fortiﬁcations 66

Extraordinary Strongholds 76

Additional Stronghold Features 83

Offensive and Defensive Features 108

Underground Strongholds 120

Powered Strongholds 125

The Mechanics of Government 129

Resources and Goods 135

The Power Structure 153

The Art of Governing 174

The Seedtime and the Harvest 211

Trade and Taxation 215

Warfare 221

The Open Mass Combat System (v2) 228

Designer’s Notes

Credits

Editor

Richard Neale

Developer

Paul Tucker

Cover Art

Ralph Horsley

Interior Illustrations

Reynaldo Batista, Eric Bergeron, Anthea Dilly,

David Esbiri, Marcio Fiorito, Reynato Guedes, Drew

Langstrom, Eric Lofgren, Rich Longmore, David

Molinas, Danilo Moreti, Rick Otey, Tony Parker,

Philip Renne, Stephen Shepherd, Anne Stokes,

Alejandro Villen and Nathan Webb

Production Manager

Alexander Fennell

Proof Reading

Ben Hesketh

247

Open Game Content & Copyright Information

Open Game Content of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly

forbidden. Classic Play - Strongholds & Dynasties is presented under the Open Game and D20 Licences.

See page 256 for the text of these licences. All text paragraphs and tables containing game mechanics and

statistics derivative of Open Game Content and the System Reference Document are considered to be Open

Game Content. All other signiﬁcant characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are copyrighted by

material herein, please contact Mongoose Publishing for clariﬁcation. ‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo

are Trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used according to the terms of the d20 System Licence

version 3.0. A copy of this Licence can be found at www.wizards.com. The mention of or reference to any

company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. Dungeons &

Dragons and Wizards of the Coast are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. in the United States and other

countries and are used with permission. Printed in China.

Mongoose Publishing

Mongoose Publishing, PO Box 1018, Swindon, SN3 1DG, United Kingdom

info@mongoosepublishing.com

Visit the Mongoose Publishing website at www.mongoosepublishing.com for additional rules and news

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

of transmitted force can do much of the same work for

you?

T his is not just another book about castles. All

Most exciting of all, in the second part of this book

we unveil the Open Governmental System. This set

of game mechanics allows player characters to set

themselves up as kings, princes, potentates, dictators,

generals, theocrats and governors. Once you have made

your fortune as an adventurer, you can now try your

hand as a monarch or as a politician. Learn to wield

new kinds of power as your various ministers offer

you their services; face new kinds of challenge as the

people demand satisfaction, or hungry empires eye your

land jealously, craving it for themselves. Be a despot,

governing with force, a plutocrat using your wealth to

buy your way to power or a High King uniting the tribal

warlords of a battle-ravaged country with nothing but

your powers of leadership.

too often, the word ‘stronghold’ means only one

thing, namely the typical stone keep on top of a

hill, complete with crenellations and arrow slits in its

walls. It is an enduring image from fantasy literature

and cinema, from Excalibur to Monty Python. As such,

it is not often explored in depth. Thought is rarely

given to what the stronghold is for, how it achieves its

intended purpose or how it could be improved.

Here, we intend to change all that. We are looking

not just at the stronghold but at the whole process of

building, quite literally from the ground up. You will

be able to choose the level of detail that suits you,

depending on how immersive you want your game to

be. Either supervise the laying of every ﬂagstone and

the siting of every spiral staircase or have a package deal

stronghold assembled for you and simply pay the bill.

Finally, we close with the Open Mass Combat System

version II, an expanded and updated version of the

original. After all, we could not give you rules for

building strongholds without some rules to help you

smash them down again!

Here you will ﬁnd not only the castles of lore, but

dozens of other strongholds and other buildings, enough

to build all the major features of a city. Everything

from the humblest farmhouse to the mightiest palace is

covered between these covers.

Classic Play

The Book of Strongholds and Dynasties is the ﬁrst in the

new ‘Classic Play’ series from Mongoose Publishing,

which will all cover one ﬁeld of central importance to

any d20 game in unprecedented depth and detail. With

this series, we intend to produce the deﬁnitive works on

subjects relevant to any Games Master.

The materials you use are detailed, as well as the places

they come from and the way in which you establish your

supply. Harvest the resources yourself or have them

delivered to you by professional builders’ guilds. Build

anything from a log cabin of wood to a towering fortress

in crystal; turn an ordinary manor house into

a fortiﬁed tower or set up your home in the

skull of a dead god. If tastes err towards

the more mundane a base of operations

high in the boughs of a tree or located deep

underground in some cavernous sanctuary

can also serve as the true heart of your power.

Once your stronghold is built, there are a

multitude of fantastic features that you can

add on to it. From the basics of low fantasy

such as stained glass windows and simple

secret compartments to the lofty magic of

trundling juggernauts, levitating platforms

and magical cannons.

The truly adventurous can even create

power sources within their strongholds.

Expand your trap building, feature planning

and gadgeteering horizons by giving your

stronghold a lightning-powered engine,

a central treadmill powered by untiring

golems or even an old fashioned coal-ﬁred

boiler. Why rely on magic, when the power

STRONGHOLDS: AN OVERVIEW

Strongholds:

An Overview

is really only the logical extension of the clan

chieftain and the palatial fortress in which he lives

is the equivalent of the long house, only wrought

in stone rather than in timbers. Royal castles will

always be found in the capital city of any kingdom

that has a monarchical government, as the castle

marks the seat of power within that kingdom.

Palaces, being the ofﬁcial residences of the ruler or

rulers, are often nothing more than castles that have

been built to a very high budget and which have

a great many fancy adornments. Some kingdoms

have palaces that are intended more for show than

defensibility, with a castle to retreat to should this

prove necessary.

T he simplest conception of a stronghold is

a fortiﬁcation or similar structure enabling

you to keep a strong hold upon the land. A

similar concept is the ‘power base’. Whenever a

given point needs to be fortiﬁed, whether to maintain

a border, house provisions or offer a place of retreat,

a stronghold can be built there. Even an ordinary

house is a stronghold of sorts, a place to keep a

family’s possessions secure and offer shelter to

family members. A stronghold can be as simple as

a walled hill or as elaborate as a mountain fortress

honeycombed with chambers.

The primary purpose of a royal castle is to defend

the king and his household. A monarch who does

not have a proper castle or fortress from which he

can govern his kingdom is leaving himself open to

assault. The stronghold at the kingdom’s heart is

often a national symbol, as it is the place from which

the protection of the whole land is supervised. It

can house the most part of the kingdom’s treasury, in

the form of tax revenue and other bullion, as well as

the heirlooms and artefacts owned by the royal line.

It also serves to protect the future of a given royal

family, as the enemies of a given crowned head are as

likely to go after the young heirs as they are to seek

to topple the ruler himself.

In this book, we will be showing you how to build

all of them, as well as giving guidance regarding the

use of strongholds. Nobody builds a castle just to sit

in it and admire the scenery. Strongholds are seats

of power, places from which one can rule the land

below. Governing is an art in itself; one to which we

will be devoting many pages in the chapters to come.

Who Needs a

Stronghold?

Strongholds are almost always built with a ﬁrm

purpose in mind, though sometimes there will arise a

maniac mage or an eccentric tycoon who will build a

crazy structure on a whim. In general, though, there

are as many motives for establishing a stronghold

as there are types of power and people to wield

them. Whenever authority needs the support of a

ﬁrm foundation and good thick walls, a stronghold is

called for.

Royal castles are often spectacularly grand, with the

wealth of the kingdom expended lavishly to give

visiting ambassadors the impression that the host

nation is prosperous. For all their gold and velvet

they are still fortiﬁed emplacements and although

they may be comfortable and splendid to the eye, no

royal castle worth the name is without an armoury

and proper siege defences.

As they have often been the seat of power for many

generations, whether the power has stayed within the

same family or not, royal castles are often ancient and

sprawling. They also are likely to have been built on

to several times over. The likeliest scenario is that the

castle began as a simple fort in a highly defensible

position, growing to become a permanent defensive

emplacement large enough to accommodate a family

and all its retainers. Sieges and natural disasters

in the past will have destroyed towers, walls and

sometimes whole wings, necessitating rebuilding on

a grand scale. The fashions and requirements of the

times will also inﬂuence what is built on to a castle.

It might, for example, be the height of fashion to

have a ballroom with glass walls, a games room or a

The key to understanding strongholds is to think

in terms of power. Those who already have some

measure of power and want to hang on to it or who

want more build strongholds to protect their stake.

The following are some instances of individuals who

could commission the building of a stronghold or

seek to acquire one through other means.

Kings, Queens and

Emperors

One cannot think of castles without thinking of

crowned heads. Huge castles and monarchical

government go naturally together, since the monarch

STRONGHOLDS: AN OVERVIEW

royal conservatory; the fad being past, the rooms will

probably be used for something else.

With stewardship of the land comes many dangers,

from revolting peasants to raiding barbarians or even

tribes of militaristic humanoids attempting to ruin

the place. For all of these reasons, a noble is well

advised to invest in a stronghold, if the king has not

already given him one along with the land he handed

out.

There may be several royal castles in a given

kingdom. Common practice is for the ruling family

to keep one summer castle and one winter, moving

from one to the other in the appropriate season.

Other, smaller castles may be used to house family

members, shelter the children of an extended royal

family or provide hospitality. It is not uncommon

for the more wealthy royal families to have small

strongholds in well-defended wooded land so that

the royals can go hunting without fear of ambush or

assassination.

There is another, more sinister reason why nobles

build strongholds, sometimes constructing private

power bases of their own in addition to that which the

king has given them. Feuds between noble houses

are very common and sometimes the intercession of a

mediator (such as the king or one of his counsellors)

is not enough to prevent major hostilities from

breaking out. Civil wars are also a gloomy reality of

life under the feudal system. It only takes one landed

noble to assemble a crew of cronies with enough

money to spare and pretty soon a privately owned

army can be hammering at the door, demanding

service to the cause or suffer the consequences.

Individual members of a royal family may also have

strongholds of their own, sometimes considered their

‘ofﬁcial residence’ whether they actually live there

or not. These are not necessarily as grand or ﬁne as

the central castle. Problematic princes are sometimes

saddled with decaying piles out in the wilderness

marking now-obsolete national boundaries, in order

to get them out of the way. As for problematic

princesses, they are as likely to be locked up inside a

small castle as they are to be given charge of one.

Without a stronghold, any claim to the land is

tenuous. Land is always won by some kind of force

and by force it must be kept. The enemies faced by a

land-owning noble are legion. Large families can be

a bane as well as a boon, as alienated sons or spiteful

daughters may gather support from foreign forces or

even from the local peasantry and try to wrest control

of the land.

Royal castles are often large enough to encompass

a miniature town in themselves. Some are part of a

larger defensive arrangement in which the outer walls

of the castle encompass the whole city. At times

of war, or in the case of a major breach, the city’s

populace will retreat behind the castle’s walls.

As the family’s fortunes rise and fall, the

maintenance of the castle will mirror their path in the

world. A prosperous family whose land is yielding

rich resources and who sit high in the favours of

royalty will enjoy a clean and well-heated castle with

a well stocked wine cellar, whereas those who have

fallen from grace or have had a run of bad luck are

more likely to be found sitting in dismal, crumbling

piles of masonry. Some families living under these

circumstances will barricade off whole parts of the

castle that they cannot afford to maintain or which

have become unsafe and live in only one suite of

rooms.

Heads of Noble Houses

The royal family of a given nation is only one noble

line among many. It may happen that other noble

houses have, in their time, been wealthy enough to

rival the ruling dynasty; indeed, rival claims upon the

throne are more likely to originate from other nobles

than from anywhere else.

Nobles are often in charge of land as a local ﬁefdom.

(Those who own land are referred to as the ‘landed

gentry’ to distinguish them from their peers who have

only titles and honour to adorn their noble name.) It

is standard practice in the feudal system for the ruler

to allocate land to his various loyal nobles, so that

they may govern it in his name and proﬁt from it.

This is not the act of generosity that it might appear,

for a noble who governs in a ruler’s name is expected

to keep the local peasants from rising in rebellion

and force them to work hard in order to generate rent

money and tax revenue, which may then be passed on

to the king.

Some noble castles keep a small military force

for security within the castle itself and to ensure

the tenants on their land do not become unruly.

Bodyguards hired to protect vulnerable members of

the household are also common. These will often

be trusted retainers who have been with the family

for generations, living within the castle itself and

knowing every inch of it.

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